During my doctoral study, I was involved in the project "Use of carbon sequestration to finance afforestation of poor farmers' marginal farmland: A case study of China". My PhD thesis mainly assessed the carbon sequestration by tree biomass and soils, and its economic value.

Specifically, the effects of tree groups (article in Plant and Soil) and slope gradients (article in Ecological Engineering) on soil carbon sequestration are significant after afforestation. In addition, using carbon value to compensate farmers' opportunity cost of their retired farmland is feasible (article in Forests) while the carbon accounting methods play an important role in the rotation period of forest plantations (article in Forest Policy and Economics). Overall, the research contributes to the efficient and sustainable management of forestry projects using carbon sequestration.

My life in HKBU was memorable. I learned a lot from our knowledgeable professors and lovely peers. The university also provided us many opportunities to communicate with world-class scholars. I can’t forget my two-month attachment in Switzerland. All these experiences are my precious treasure that will benefit all my life.

Now I’m doing research in South China Normal University. The working environment in Mainland China has been improved a lot and will continue getting better. To me it’s a good time to come back to work and stay together with my family.

My supervisor always reminded me to work hard during my PhD study which I also want to remind you. Even if there may be many obstacles in your study, don’t give up and keep fighting. You’ll finally succeed.

My thesis is titled as ‘The State (re)Production of Scale A Case Study of Shenshan Special Cooperation Zone, China’, by which you may find the content deals with the scale theory and economic zones of China. I hope such research will contribute to enrich the process-based approach of scale jumping and present an ongoing institutional test on the ‘enclave economic development model’.

Most of my time was spent in students’ office, and the most impressive memory was reading hundreds of paper and books to figure out what is scale and how it works, which took me almost one year’s time. Yet now I’d like to say, it’s all worth it! Such accumulation of knowledge has helped me a lot in both doing research and developing ways of thinking.

I am an economic geographer, and my research focuses on the global/regional production chain/network and regional developments. More particularly, my thesis studies the production relocation from China to Vietnam. I am now working at Lingnan University as a senior project officer, researcher and lecturer. I enjoyed very much my study journey in HKBU, and it led me to my position now. It has given me not only the chance to engage in different research-related activities, such as presentations, international conferences, and overseas field investigations, but also the opportunities for taking up teaching and administrative duties. I was able to be the tutor, and I was also able to help organize the overseas exchange tour and international conference for the department and the faculty. As our world has become increasingly competitive, it is always good to learn things apart from our research field. And I think the department and HKBU did offer me a complete learning package.

Professional Profile: https://www.ln.edu.hk/osl/introduction/our-staff/dr-chan-yuen-tung-david

The topic of my thesis is "the links among the built environment, travel attitudes, and travel behavior: a household-based perspective". In this research, I aim to explore the decision mechanism of the household couples in location and travel choices. Based on the household travel survey data in Beijing, 2016, and a series of multivariate analyses, I find that the couples do play different roles in household decisions. Specifically, the husband's travel attitudes matter more in long-term choices like the residential location and car ownership, while the wife's dominant shortterm decisions such as daily travel in urban China. In addition, the husband tends to adjust his travel behavior in accord to the wife's travel pattern, but not the other way around.

Besides providing a new (household) perspective to future academic research on the built environment and travel behavior, this thesis also has important policy implications for future urban and transport planning. In particular, urban planners should better take the household rather than the individual as the audience of land use and transport-related policies. Travel is a way to meet personal needs in daily life, and thus improved wellbeing should be the ultimate policy goal in transport. In future works, I will extend the current research framework by including social equity and travelers' subjective wellbeing into analysis.

Professional Profile: https://www.uu.nl/staff/XGuan